1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of computer-based insurance processing. More specifically, the present invention discloses a novel rating system and method for possible insurance risk that integrates a legacy insurance underwriting process with a real-time on-line rating process which leverages extensible business logic electronic spreadsheets in a server based environment.
2. Description of Related Art
With regard to the insurance industry, records regarding issued policies, premiums, payments and payouts must be maintained for extended periods of time. The insurance industry readily embraced computer and computer technology for the storage of their records and files and developed special purpose software systems that were suitable for the maintenance and storage of the insurance files.
As computer technology and computer software changes, the insurance industry is pressed to update and upgrade their equipment and facilities. For example, the current computerized process for underwriting an insurance policy is a textual-based system that is burdensome and not user-friendly. The process requires that the underwriter prepare forms using manual tabulation of data and, in cases, requires specialized knowledge with regard to translating human-readable information into computer-readable codes. This is time-consuming and labor-intensive. However, there is hesitation to upgrade current existing software, i.e., legacy processor and associated software, as there is a significant cost in time, labor and expense in transitioning existing legacy-software-based files to newer software.
Moreover, the process of insurance underwriting for a prospective applicant within these existing legacy-software-based systems begins from submission of account information of a user to rating a policy and proceeds to quote creation and finally to account booking. In policy rating, the rating engines within these systems require data files that are often manually created. These manual files have fields containing data that are not easily mapped to existing fields within the legacy systems and therefore, updating the rating engines and processes require a lot of manual manipulation. This manual manipulation considerably slows down the speed to market process for new insurance products. In addition, the manual nature of these data files prevents scalability as well as ease in implementing the insurance underwriting system on individuals' computers, such as broker computers who utilize these underwriting systems to generate insurance quotes on a daily basis.
Hence, there is a need for a method and system that is not time-consuming, burdensome and labor-intensive to develop, implement and maintain rating engines that affords an underwriter the ability to process electronically the factors that underwrite an insurance policy while providing any legacy interface to utilize the rating system.